Re-Agitator: A Decade of Writing on Takashi Miike (hardback)

Product Details

"A sumptuous archive of insight into the wildly varied cinema of Takashi Miike from the world's foremost authority" - Jovanka Vuckovic, director of The Captured Bird

From outrageous flavour of the month to respected modern master - Takashi Miike's rise to fame has been stellar. The former bad boy of Japanese film is now a regular at the world's most prestigious film festivals.

Re-Agitator is a brand new book from Tom Mes, whose groundbreaking Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike helped shape this filmmaker's international career. Mes has been along for the ride ever since Audition turned heads and stomachs at the turn of the millennium. This new book collects more than ten years' worth of his writing on Miike. From dusty film sets in Japan to festival intrigue on the Riviera, and from the straight-to-video ghetto to the stage, Mes covers the full scope of this unclassifiable filmmaker's life and work - with the kind of detail and intimacy that only an insider can provide.

Fully endorsed by the filmmaker himself, the full-colour Re-Agitator: A Decade of Writing on Takashi Miike also features a provocative foreword and a gallery of unique set photos by longtime Miike collaborator Christian Storms.

This book is NOTAgitator Part 2. It doesn't continue where the first one left off, but rather collects the vast majority of the writing on Miike that Mes has done over the years for magazines, websites, DVD liner notes, in non-English-language books, as well as for festival catalogues. This luxurious coffee-table hardback also contains previously unpublished material, like an interview recorded at the 2005 Venice film festival, plus a piece on 13 Assassins written exclusively for this book.

The wide variety of sources and formats of these texts entails that there is an equally wide variety in styles, tones, and approaches: from impressionistic reviews to personal eyewitness accounts and loose, appreciative write-ups. Re-Agitator is also an opportunity to add some context and background on the development of the Japanese film industry over the past twenty years and Miike's career therein, something that was largely absent from Agitator. The publisher and author also feel very fortunate to be able to include a series of very candid behind-the-scenes photographs taken during the troubled production of Sukiyaki Western Django.

CONTENTS:

Foreword by Christian Storms

Introduction

Light in the Darkness: Takashi Miike's Blues Harp

Make Mine Metal: Full Metal Yakuza

The Hype Is Not Enough

The Protagonist Was a Passer-By

Rainy Dog and Pup

No Particular Place to Go

Lost Souls in a Drifting Town

...Or Something Else Entirely: Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive Trilogy

The Gozu Chronicles: Takashi Miike Hits Cannes

Gozu: Lost in Flagellation

Andromedia: A Miike for the Masses

Salaryman Kintaro: The White-Collar Wonder

Yakuza Demon: Sad at Heart

"You should just shoot your film and not think about anything else"

The most romantic scenes in Takashi Miike's movies

Izo ad infinitum

Three feet of piano wire

Fit for Family Viewing: Shangri-La

Rocket Romantics: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

Takashi Miike Leaves His Imprint

Generation V: Takashi Miike and the Wild World of V-cinema

Notes for a Sonic Tribute to Takashi Miike

Paul Verhoeven Liked It

Sukiyaki Western Django photo gallery by Christian Storms

Let's Be Bastards: Sukiyaki Western Django

Zatoichi Regained

Just Another Piece in the Miike Puzzle

"Everyone in Japan is lonely. You too, right?"

Zebraman 2's Showbiz Politics

Gory Gory Hallelujah

The Joy of Filmmaking, with your host Takashi Miike

One, Two, Ichi's Coming for You

This Is Not Maturity

13 Assassins and Other Histories of Violence

Coda: For the Sake of Love

Takashi Miike Filmography

About the Author

Tom Mes is the founder and co-editor of MidnightEye.com, the world's leading English-language publication on contemporary Japanese cinema. His work has appeared in such magazines as Fangoria, Impact, Japan Magazine and Skrien. His writing on Takashi Miike has been published in England, the USA, France and Russia. Tom has written 2 other books for FAB Press: Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike and Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto.